#1,099: Oh, What a Night!
Political Ground Breakers El-Sayad, Haaland, and Pappas
The one and only time I ever got blind drunk with my mom was on June 4, 1968: the night of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination at the hands of Sirhan Sirhan. In the hours before we witnessed the fatal shooting, we had been celebrating RFK’s victory in the California Presidential primary. Shocked and overwhelmed with grief, Madam went to the bar in our family room, pulled out a bottle of G-d knows what and a handful of ice cubes . . . and we drank ourselves into alcoholic stupefaction. Within less than 2 years, I went to work for Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh (1922-1987), the man who had been standing next to Bobby when he was gunned down. At the time I went to work for him, Jesse, the most powerful Democrat in California, was running for governor. (We wound up losing to the incumbent, Ronald Reagan, by slightly more than half a million votes. Jesse went on to serve 2 terms as California State Treasurer — [“One last feed at the public trough,” he was wont to say.] )
While June 4, 1968 was unquestionably the saddest, most depressing night of politics I have ever experienced, this past Tuesday night — November 3 — was easily one of the happiest and most uplifting of all time. For not only did the Democratic Party recapture both the House and Senate; they did it in grand, overwhelming fashion. I do wish Madam could have lived to see and celebrate it.
Unquestionably, the midterm elections turned out to be a night of hisstoric firsts:
Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor — whose great-great-great-grandfather was a slave — defeated Republican billionaire Rick Jackson, thus becoming the first Black female governor in the nation’s history.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s highly contested Senate race, defeating Republican Mike Rogers to become the upper chamber’s first Muslim member. His ethnicity came under frequent attack throughout the race from both Rogers, POTUS, and VP Vance.
Xavier Becerra made history as California’s first elected Latino governor. Becerra broke through a crowded Democratic primary after an underwhelming start. He was widely favored to defeat Republican challenger and conservative pundit Steve Hilton, given the state’s Democratic stronghold. The son of Mexican immigrants, Becerra is set to govern a state where more than 40% of its residents identify as Latino.
Democrat Gina Hinojosa pulled off a stunning upset, unseating the three-term governor Greg Abbott. She will be the state’s first Latina governor and the first Democrat to win the office since 1990. Hinojosa’s campaign gained little traction at first, as Abbott trounced her in campaign funding.
She soon became a fierce contender, touting her focus on affordability and opposition to new data centers, the latter of which made Abbott vulnerable to criticism.
Deb Haaland, the former U.S. Interior Secretary, comfortably won New Mexico’s gubernatorial race. Haaland thanked voters in a Tuesday night X post: “You chose a future where New Mexico comes first, where working families have a chance to get ahead, and where every New Mexican has a voice,” she wrote. “Whether you voted for me or not, I will always be your governor, too. Because this campaign was about all of us, and the future we deserve.”
Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe.
Chris Pappas, a New Hampshire representative, was elected to the US Senate, thus making him the first openly gay man to serve in the upper chamber.
Pappas tore into Trump, Elon Musk, and others who backed his opponent, John Sununu, at a victory party with his spouse, Vann Bentley, standing nearby. “They threw money, attack ads, and outright lies at us every day for months,” Pappas said. “But we beat them anyway, didn’t we?”
Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, is the first Native American woman elected to the US Senate. Flanagan is Ojibwe and a member of the White Earth Nation.
David Crowley won Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race, thus becoming the first Black person to hold the office. Crowley’s victory came against many odds: He dropped out of the race over the summer, only to rejoin at the urging of outgoing Democratic governor Tony Evers. Crowley’s Republican opponent, Tom Tiffany, greatly outspent him.
Aaron Ford, Democratic candidate, defeated Republican governor Joe Lombardo and will serve as the first Black governor in Nevada. He previously was the state’s first Black Senate majority leader and attorney general.
Dr. Amy Acton, a Democrat, defeated Republican billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy to become Ohio’s first female governor. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, defeated Republican state House speaker Lisa Demuth to become Minnesota's first woman governor.
Republican Marsha Blackburn, a one-term United States Senator, became the first woman to be elected as governor of Tennessee
In overwhelmingly defeating Ken Paxton for the United States Senate, Texan James Talerico became the first Democrat to win a Lonestar statewide election in 32 years.
Not only that, but in defeating incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall (the M.D. who sued dozens of his patients for nonpayment), Pastor Adam Hamilton became the first Kansas Democrat to be elected to the United States Senate from Kansas in 94 years . . . back when Babe Ruth and pilot Amelia Earhart were front-page news.
As of an hour ago (it is currently 12:30, Thursday, November 5 EST here in S. Florida), there are still 2 Senate races to be called: Mississippi and Alaska. In Mississippi, Scott Colom, a Democratic prosecutor, led Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by a little over 1,100 votes, while in Alaska, former Representative Mary Peltola was leading Senator Dan S. Sullivan by an even smaller margin. The one state where Democrats fared the worst was Florida, where Democratic candidates for United States Senate and Governor were defeated by staunchly conservative Republican supporters of 47 and outgoing Governor Ron DeSantis.The one bright spot was that both the gerrymandered districts in South Florida (whose lines were changed in order to elect more MAGA Republicans) were captured by Democratic incumbents Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
At the moment, Democrats hold an 84-seat (259-176) majority in the House, and a 10-seat (54-44) majority in the Senate. This means no one nominated by #47 for a seat on the Supreme Court will have a chance of being approved for a lifetime appointment, and that anybody from the regime who is impeached will likely pay the price. (This morning, outgoing Kentucky Republican Tomas Massie put in Articles of Impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.) Then there is the case of about-to-become former Speaker Mike Johnson; he won’t stand a snowball’s chance of being elected House Minority Leader. And who knows? Perhaps an increasing number of Congressional Republicans will grow spines and speak out against the lunacy, con artistry, and presenile dementia of their leader, his family and his gaggle of billionaires. Goodness knows, a bunch of Republican backbenchers growing sturdier, more resilient spines couldn’t hurt.
In an afternoon chat with my SOS (“slightly older sister”) Erica the afternoon after the election, she made a most trenchant comment: “It is rare for any of us on our side of the political aisle to ever follow the advice of you-know-who. This time, however, we did when he demanded that we “vote as if I were on the ballot.” We obeyed him...and suddenly the world looks a whole lot brighter.”
Erica has always been the bright one!
Oh, what a night!!
Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone